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(I'm the one who said you should only sack out plough horses.)
I am not against "sacking out" the way some people do it. I am dead set
against "sacking out" the way most people who have never seen it done might
do it. Nor am I against tying up a horse's leg, but you'd better have
someone who really knows what they're doing help you or it can be a
complete disaster.
Now, I'll explain:
What's "sacking out?"
a) Tie your horse to a post. Find a white plastic gunny sack, and, waving
it back and worth, hit your horse with it until the horse stands still.
b) Working while the horse is loose in a round pen, have a friend flap a
white plastic sack around in the air while you work the horse.
c) Throw your horse with a "running W" and, after 20 minutes, hit the
horse with the plastic sack.
So, which answer's right? A B and C --- they all can be called "sacking
out."
Sacking out - desensitizing - whatever you call it - sounds like a great
thing. Expose your horse to as many scary things as possible, and
hopefully they'll never spook.
But - this works for some horses, and not for others. You can not expose
the horse to every scary thing he'll ever see. Train him with a white bag,
and he'll see a black shadow. Train him with a rope and he'll spook at a
stick. Then there's always bears, elk, dirt bikes, llamas, swinging
bridges, firecrackers - you name it.
The truth is for sacking out to work, something more than exposure has to
happen.
The horse has to have enough trust in the handler to not fear the foreign
object. Basically (and this is a lot more complicated than I can get into
here) you train the horse that if he trusts in you, the big-fat-scary
bug-a-boo won't get him.
If your horse believes that he doesn't need to be scared of anything which
you are not afraid of (ie. if he sees you as the lead horse and finds
safety with you) then your horse will stop shying. It's very simple, but
you need to know what you're doing.
This concept has been around forever, and almost every good trainer
understands it intuitively.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, please read John Lyons or Pat
Parelli. There's also an E-Mailing list for "natural horsemanship" at
HORSEMAN@CMSA.BERKELEY.EDU
As for tying up a leg - yes, it does work. So does a "running W." But
they tend to work better with calmer horses. Spooky horses tend to go off
their rocker and hurt themselves. (Hence my allusion to plough horses.) I
can tell you a great story about the difference between using a running W
on a percheron/standerdbred vs. an Arabian.
By the way, on my next installment, I'll tell about "laundry detergent
jug desensitizing" and start a whole new topic under the subject heading
:Worst training mistakes I've ever made.
Karen Willmus
willmus@runestone.net
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